Josiah H Combs, Folk-Songs of the Southern United States (American Folklore Society, 1967), an English translation of Combs' 1925 dissertation at the University of Paris, pp 188-189:

Ellen Smith
Contributed by Dan Gibson, Lackey, Knott Co, KY

Come all you young people, both far and near,
I'll relate you a history of June, last year.

Last Monday morning about the break of day,
They captured poor Ellen and carried her away.

Where was she shot, and where was she found?
She's shot through the heart, lying cold on the ground.

Who would be so brave, and who would be so bold,
To murder poor Ellen for a handful of gold?

Who would be so brave, and who would have the face,
To murder poor Ellen in such a lonesome place?

Now poor Ellen's dead, with her hands upon her breast;
The high sheriffs and bloodhounds will give me no rest.

Poor little Ellen, she's harmless as a dove;
She's always stayed at home, for home she did love.

O now I am married and roaming in the East,
The police and bloodhounds will let me see no peace.

O now I am married and roaming in the West
The sheriffs and bloodhounds will give me no rest.

O now I am married and living alone
The sheriffs and bloodhounds won't leave me alone.

They gathered their Winchesters, they hunted me down,
They found me a-sailing in Monterrey town.

It's true they have got me, and I'm a prisoner now,
But the Lord, He is with me and hears every vow.

O now they have caught me, they'll hang me if they can;
I'm sure if they hang me, they'll hang an innocent man.

O now I am a prisoner, and I'm confined in jail;
My friends all gathered round, but none was worth my bail.

Now I am a-praying, a-praying all the time,
A-praying for the man that committed this crime.

If I were a free man and back home today,
I'd scatter red roses on sweet Ellen's grave.

Sometimes I have a dollar, sometimes two or three;
My wife's off a-gamblin', she don't care for me.

Sometimes I have a dollar, sometimes five and six,
I want to be a-shooting, my pistol's out of fix.

D K Wilgus comments in his introduction that "apparently at the eleventh hour, Combs was not allowed to include any British or American song if 'one or more versions, sometimes quite different and inferior, had already been published in America'. The 'line' was not tightly held -- witness the inclusion of 'John Henry' -- but it shaped the collection." At any rate, this must be an early publication of the song. No date appears in the text or the appended list of songs from the Combs Collection, but it may go back to the 1910s.

As with other KY versions (cf Theophilus Hoskins and Pete Steele), Gibson's text of "Ellen Smith" has been cross-bred with other, unrelated jailhouse ditties. Combs doesn't mention whether Gibson was a banjo picker.

Frank Proffitt Sings Folksongs, Folkways 2360, recorded, I believe, in the very early 1960s, features a version with dulcimer accompaniment. Lyrics are quite different from the normal set and are largely concerned with establishing that Ellen was a slut who pretty much got what she was asking for. Liner notes don't say so, but I have wondered if Proffitt might have composed this alternate version himself. I don't have the full set at hand (my other computer is broken down), but among the verses are:

Many a heart she has broken, many a lie she has told
It all now is ended in her grave in the snow.

Ellen, poor Ellen, you've wasted your life
You might have made some man a very good wife.

Your friends tried to warn you, of your ending you was told
It all now is ended in your grave in the snow.

The men they will mourn you, their wives will be glad,
Such is the ending of a girl that is bad.

Perhaps she's in heaven, God only knows,
The Bible plainly tells us she's gone down below.